


Family

by metalmaddog



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 20:18:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10726470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metalmaddog/pseuds/metalmaddog
Summary: Ser Noudenet contemplates his relationship with the other Knights of Heaven's Ward.





	Family

Opening your eyes to utter darkness after a period of unconsciousness can leave you feeling detached and lost from yourself, but if you also hear nothing, smell nothing and feel nothing you will most likely imagine yourself either not quite human, or at least one that has entered a dungeon without a healer. The brief moment can also induce panic in any lesser being but Ser Noudenet was not one of those: when he woke up to this utterly empty darkness, a void, he simply and calmly determined he must have died.  
‘Am I really dead?’ Was the first thought floating in his mind however after the initial and much too quick conclusion, but like a good scientist the next one was: ‘I must needs look at this logically now…’ Since he determined he could truly see nothing at all that was point towards being dead, though wasn’t there Halone’s halls to be expected after dead? They would not be this dark would they? Perhaps it was simply a period of passing there and soon he would be greeted by all those Ishgardian heroes he had never quite cared about and could barely remember the names of.  
He tried to move his fingers but at least he could not feel anything where he assumed his fingertips should have been: after all he wasn’t even sure his body was here or was he simply a soul floating in endless emptiness. It was another point towards death.  
Next he tried to smell but was quite sure that his nose moved and that his face muscles were actually there but perhaps one still had face muscles in after life. How could he possibly be sure?  
His ears would be the one to decide this argument and for a moment he shut out the voices in his brain and merely listened. There was nothing he could hear outside, but little by little he started to realise he could hear his own blood gushing in his veins, the air from his lungs passing through his mouth and a faint heartbeat indicating he was not feeling as calm as he thought. He wasn’t sure if all this quite comforted him or not.  
‘I am still alive but why can’t I move or see? Where am I? What was I doing before?’ Hard he began to think of the world that had been before this hollow dark existence he inhabited for the moment. Surely this wasn’t how it had been before, was it?  
Between his reveries he suddenly remembered that perhaps one could try saying something. Hearing his own voice in this space would certainly help. He opened his mouth managed to let out a sigh of some sort until he felt his mouth filling up with dusty matter and make him start coughing. He turned his head to spit it out.  
‘There is something here. I am not alone! It’s not empty space if there is…” He chewed on the pieces and spat again. ‘Rocks? It really feels something earthy… and Fury take the pain!’ The realisation of there being physical world outside his head gave him some vigour and he tried to squirm. He found out he could not move much but he was quite sure his upper body was there but where were his hands and feet? He was quite positive he was of the elezen race and should have by all laws of physics possessed such extremities.  
“St..p m…sing ar…nd…!” His eyes automatically darted to the direction of the incredibly muffled voice and his heart leapt at it. That voice raised in him some incredibly elated feelings as if his soul had just rose into his throat to try and get out to go to the person speaking. It was clearly a male voice: deep and firm, at least it had been now but he for some reason insisted on adding other adjectives: the he remembered the voice speaking gently to him, laughing hard and joking, there was mischievous edge to the voice. He remembered that and suddenly a face floated into his mind. A handsome elezen with sharp features and silken blonde almost white hair. He blinked.  
“Ser Guerrique…” He spoke out loud softly, in almost a whisper then cried out. “Ser Guerrique… hel…!” Though his cry was cut short when his mouth filled with dust again but between the coughing fits it all fell back into his mind: his life before. His family at first: a family that had happily cast him out being a useless little runt, his school days at the Scholasticate, his experiments, all the people he had never liked, and then finally joining the Heaven’s Ward. He remember all of them, all his brothers and suddenly he felt his face getting hot.  
‘What… what is this?’ He couldn’t understand why something hot was falling down the sides of his face. He couldn’t touch it to confirm. Suddenly he wasn’t so calm and collected about his possible death. He wanted to be with them again. He had never appreciated them enough: always saying harsh words barely acknowledging their work. He had hid behind his superior intelligence in hopes of not getting hurt like he had always before. His family, his schoolmates, the people on the streets everyone had been beneath him but… his real family: the Heaven’s ward… together they had protected the Archbishop and together they had done everything. He had never been left out of anything: always part of the group. He owed them so much: he owed them kinder words than he had said. He couldn’t die without telling them how much they meant.  
All the while he kept thinking he could hear muffled voices now and sound of heavy objects being moved.  
“Shut your trap, your whore son!” Even the unpleasant cursing of Ser Grinnaux was such a welcome sound to Ser Noudenet’s ears that they almost fluttered, like the wings of a butterfly. He mouthed the name quietly but knew better than to shout. He wanted to tell Ser Grinnaux how much he appreciated his strength and his very rare fits of kindness. Despite the Dzemael son being rough and vulgar, even to the point of stupidity, he had always trusted Noudenet immensely; that too to the point of stupidity. He and Guerrique might argue but if he needed heavy lifting the two and Paulecrain would always help. While he needed subjects for his experiments, which weren’t always himself since he had to study results on others too, Grinnaux would without a question (though not without snide comments) do as he was told even though he might get mad about the results. No matter how much threatening of bodily harm there had been from the warrior Noudenet didn’t remember him ever laying a mean hand on him. While he himself had often called Grinnaux stupid. While he still wasn’t going to deny the simple fact that the big man was indeed very stupid, perhaps he should have thought of his positive qualities instead. They were brothers after all.  
“Don’t touch him.” The cold voice belonged to Ser Paulecrain and again Noudenet wanted to cry out his name. He was a rather quiet man and Noudenet had never known him very well. All he did was follow Ser Grinnaux around like a dog. There was nothing wrong with his skill as a fighter but Noudenet now realised he knew very little about the mysterious lancer. Did all his life really revolve around Ser Grinnaux or was there something else? He had never bothered to find out… if he died now he would never know anything about him. So cold and quiet and always calm that was Ser Paulecrain.  
“Oh please stop bickering, boys. You’ll get him out… perhaps Paulecrain should also remove his shirt? It might help.” The sweet alluring sound of Ser Charibert even in a situation like this made Noudenet shiver: half from fear and half from desire. He could still hear him complaining about the dust, heat and mess and imagined the beautiful mage lifting his robes from the dirty floor and fanning himself. If there was naught else one could say positive about Ser Charibert there was at least the fact that he was quite sensual. He was a hard man to like but an easy man to desire. Even him, Noudenet missed now and didn’t wish to go without telling him how much he appreciated the older mage’s guidance. Charibert had taught him a lot about fire and flame and even more about the former Inquisitor’s torturing techniques, sometimes he had been at the receiving end but even then it had been an educational and oddly pleasurable ride. A gentle smile or touch accompanied by kind words of guidance from Ser Charibert had been precious gifts that he had not appreciated enough due to their rarity.  
“Half of us are already in our trousers, Ser Charibert. Surely it is enough?” Ser Ignasse sounded strained perhaps speaking while lifting something heavy. Noudenet was quickly reminded of his earlier thoughts about Halone’s hall and meeting the heroes there. How many times had Ignasse spoken about the former glorious men and slayers of dragons? He couldn’t even count and to his utter shame he had never really listened. Such things did not concern him. He did not admire these men and women but perhaps he should have listened after all. Ser Ignasse had told him countless of times how they owed to them that we still had a beautiful city like Ishgard to even protect. On occasions he had even pointed out, perhaps to appeal to Noudenet personally, that they had kept all the knowledge in Ishgard safe from the Dravanians. He should have listened more, he shouldn’t have thought as he always had that such ramblings were not important to a man of science. He shouldn’t have thought he was above them all because he was more intelligent.  
“Ah Ser Vellguine!” Still the concerned voice of Ignasse came from somewhere far above. “I… am quite fine, Ser Ignasse. Please do not concern yourself with me. The heat is simply unbearable down here.” The eldest of them… what had Noudenet thought of him? Just an old man stuck in his ways who did not understand the simplest things when it came to magic or science? Let alone when he had tried one time to explain him the way void crystals were formed and how it tied together with his studies of aether at that particular time. The old man had had nothing particular to say about it but he had always listened to him. Now that he thought about it he didn’t really know if Ser Vellguine understood or not because he tended to just smile to him in a fatherly manner and tell him he was doing excellent work, pat him on the head and be on his way again. His own father had told him that he should become something reasonable, like a book keeper and not imagine stations above his place in life, never listening to him. Ser Vellguine had never tried to get rid of him or told him to be quiet: only listening to his theories with an attentive ear. He was a kind man to his younger Knights and never found them to be a burden. How could have thought of him the way he had?  
“I do hope he isn’t terribly hurt…” There was a slight crack in the usual calm voice of Ser Haumeric it was like a puff of winter air but this time its icy coolness was laced with concern. Ser Haumeric mainly stood for their healer, with Noudenet pitching in as much as he could; and as healer’s job went it got little appreciation. He himself had always thought that when it came to the mages Haumeric was perhaps the most unnecessary of them but he realised now that perhaps with people like Ser Grinnaux he would not ever be capable of dealing with healing by himself. He remembered the warriors and paladins often blaming Ser Haumeric who simply shrugged their accusations away or told them he would let them die next time and they would see who was doing their job. He was a man who seemed very interested in politics and often spoke of it to him but Noudenet tended to have no concern for such matters any more than history. He remembered Haumeric often arguing with Ser Charibert about his callous disregard of life: killing so indiscriminately, so easily. Ser Haumeric was cold but extremely just. He would listen to all sides before ever making a judgement and was ever gentle and big brotherly with Ser Noudenet and because he had always seemed unaffected Noudenet had grown careless around him and made fun of his abilities even to his face. He felt terrible now as if there was something heavy pressing on his chest about to crush him. He would have to tell Ser Haumeric how much he admired his caring nature.  
“Look that pillar seems firmly wedged there… if we build a pulley we can probably move the bigger rocks easier.” The voice seemed to fade as the speaker walked away but even if he had not recognised the sound of Ser Hermenost’s voice: he would have recognised the only one who always came up with a clever solution to a difficult situation. He certainly had the most imagination of them, though even there Noudenet had thought of himself better until the incident with Hermenost’s clever idea with his axe. Soon he had realised that he was only jealous and to remedy the situation and make himself seem like a better man he had gone out to congratulate the former cleric on his excellent idea. He remembered himself cringing inside, feeling dark and bitter that he had not come up with such a plan. Yet whenever the older man had ran into a problem with his idea it had always been Noudenet he had consulted. How could he simply bury the nights they had been heatedly exchanging ideas of changes in aetherochemical construction of meteor spells, under his own feelings of jealousy? The man was perhaps the one closest with his own intellect and despite being quiet, humble and pious man he had never turned down a little argument with the young Ser Noudenet. Many good invention had followed those conversations on both sides. Noudenet again felt utterly ashamed of his own previous actions and thoughts.  
“I will help you, Ser Hermenost. We are going to need some tools.” A firm order was barked at someone by their Very Revered Archimandrite; Ser Zephirin. He was perhaps the one Noudenet dealt least with on personal basis, though he behaved like a big brother to him on most private occasions. It was obvious that the one who was in charge had to keep some distance but Zephirin had always tried very hard to be close to the others, which was probably what described Zephirin the best: he always tried very hard. Noudenet was used to following orders because it tended to make his life easier and give him more freedom to do as he pleased; especially when the one giving the orders was not around. But Ser Zephirin wasn’t a bad leader to his mind. He allowed them freedoms but also kept them in line and made sure they worked well together. He would break up any fights and from the start had always made sure no one bullied Ser Noudenet even if it seemed impossible for some of them not to bully their younger even a little. Ser Zephirin made sure they ran smoothly and got along better than a real family and that was what Noudenet should have appreciated more. The man surely had his own problems too to deal with.  
“Janlenoux, my brother, please be so kind and help me lift this piece of pillar. I swear it weighs more than I do!” The youngest of them got an immediate reply from his childhood friend. “Please, Adelphel… don’t try to lift it on your own. Of course I will help. Together we’ll move even the mightiest obstacle.” The gentle yet perhaps somewhat ironic words were followed by some laughter from both parties. If it was hard to imagine Ser Grinnaux without Ser Paulecrain, at least for Noudenet it was, then it was almost equally hard to imagine the two old friends without each other. Adelphel was practically same age as him but he had never felt strong kinship with the cherub faced young Knight. Being as he was the youngest of his own family it had always been odd for him to think that Adelphel was even younger and perhaps he had gone a little overboard with it sometimes and treated the Knight in a patronising manner. He was more intelligent after all… but he should stop thinking this way. Adelphel and Janlenoux were the figures he most often ran into when he ran out of food during his nightly experiments and had to run into the kitchens to fetch some. In the larder he had ran into the two embracing each other and to win his silence Janlenoux had baked him a delicious dessert every day for a month. He had never asked for it since he was not all that concerned about their relationship with one another. He found love to be nothing more than a silly reaction in the aetheretic flow of people. If people chose to follow it then who was he to be the judge of that. But it was safe to say that he did not believe in love. Now that he thought of the two and the way they looked at one another, sneaked glances during services or snuck behind pillars for a quick kiss when the older Ward members were not looking, he suddenly felt he might have been missing something vital in life. To be in love… was it something he could research? He should have asked them and talked to them about it not just let them believe he was the enemy and bribe him with desserts. Unfortunately he was quite weak to Janlenoux’ cooking and probably should have more often told him how much he loved them and it was not needed for the pointless reason of bribing. Surely the sugary treats would have tasted better had Janlenoux freely given them to him?  
‘Can I love like them? Will someone love me like that?’ His first sexual experiences had been with his brother Knights mainly with Ser Haumeric and Ser Charibert but the memories he cherished the most were those with Ser Guerrique. They were often together and he would nurse him after fights with Ser Grinnaux. The warrior was much too kind to him and Noudenet had slowly learned to be kind back at him. Sometimes they ended up in bed together: quietly and gently not to arouse the others Guerrique had touched him all over, it had been nothing like what he was used to with Ser Haumeric: Guerrique always made him feel like he was the most beautiful person in all of Eorzea. Considering himself in any way attractive let alone beautiful was something Noudenet had simply not even considered a possibility. They were very comfortable with each other but they didn’t behave like Adelphel and Janlenoux so was it not love? He considered it very hard but could not quite come up with a satisfactory answer.  
Suddenly there was a dangerous noise a sort of creak when something extremely heavy shifts. There was some commotion from above and the voices started to fade, he felt himself move without moving. Dust and small pieces of rock were raining down on him and then something heavy struck his forehead. He felt he did not lose consciousness but after that it was suddenly very silent again. He started first to simply worry that something worse had happened. What had he been doing before? He couldn’t quite remember but perhaps he had made an experiment that had gone wrong. For all he knew he could have opened a gate to the void and was now falling endlessly in emptiness: taken away from his family of brothers. He felt the warm wetness on his cheeks again and realised he was crying. Where had the voices gone? He was really dying now? Would he die without ever being able to tell them what he really thought of them? How much he appreciated them and even… loved?  
There was nothing to see or hear now: utter quietness and emptiness had fallen again: suddenly he was unsure if he could even feel his own muscles moving. Everything but his head had suddenly ceased to exist and he was alone, utterly alone with nothing but his thoughts. The black cloud of panic suddenly rose in his mind and started to eat away the thing he had always trusted the most: his reasoning, knowledge and imagination. He would never get bullied by Ser Grinnaux again, never get reprimanded by Zephirin not to be mean to those less intelligent, never hear Ser Charibert curse the filthy rats, never have an argument with Ser Hermenost and never lay safe in Ser Guerrique’s arms again. His voice was hoarse when he screamed that he did not want to die like this. But his mind was slipping away: he tried to reach for his memories with the others and when that didn’t work he tried to reach for the basic principles of how aether worked but nothing came up. He was utterly lost inside his empty brain. It was all going blank and there was simply the panic, the fear of death: all he could hear was his heart beating too fast, the blood gushing in his veins about to burst out. The various images of death only playing over and over in his head, making it impossible for his body not to react physically to his fear and thus increase the mind’s conclusion that death was happening since physical reactions had grown so extreme.  
Then suddenly there was light shining down on him and Guerrique’s truly heavenly face surrounded by a light from a flame Ser Charibert held between his long nailed fingers. The panic, darkness and death were suddenly washed away from Ser Noudenet’s mind and body by Ser Charibert’s cleansing fire. “Please… help me…”  
“Hold on, Nuu. We are all here for you.” Guerrique and the others proceeded to clear out more of the rubble while Charibert still holding the light with his other hand quickly reached to down into the hole to brush Noudenet’s face clean. The feel of another person’s warm skin on his clammy forehead utterly calmed Noudenet down. And he knew he was safe again in the arms of his brothers.  
After that he barely remembered anything of the rescue effort since he was too exhausted, half falling unconscious, too comfortable with the feeling that he was alive, and that they were all there and would not let him slip away into an unknown world. It was some moments later that he woke up again this time in Guerrique’s arms who had pulled him out from under the fallen roof. He didn’t remember if he had said anything since he kept slipping out of consciousness but he felt so happy as he glanced at the concerned but happy faces of the other Knights gathered around them. He felt the soothing coldness of Ser Haumeric’s hands on his head as the healing magic floated into his body and brought feeling back to his lower half.

The next time he woke up properly was in his own bed propped up against several pillows and tugged firmly under a blanket. Ser Charibert was oddly enough sitting by the bedside doing a needlework. He glanced over to be greeted with the usual phrases he tended to embed in his strange hobby: this time it was ‘Fire shall cleanse and purify us all.’ but the ominous sentence was surrounded by leaves and plants instead of the usual fire and brimstones.  
“Ser Charibert…?” Noudenet spoke in a quiet voice barely getting his voice out. The extremely unusual nursemaid put away his feminine hobby and poured him a glass of water from a porcelain pitcher then made him drink it. They had no time to converse when there was suddenly a knock on the door and His Holiness Thordan VII stepped in, or perhaps slid like old holy people tended to move, followed by Ser Zephirin. Noudenet tried to sit up and Charibert helped him as best as he could. The younger mage quickly and humbly tried to bow his head.  
“Please lay still, my child. You were badly hurt.” The old man’s wrinkled but soft hand was pressed on his forehead and he simply had to lay back down but he was still scared about the sudden Halonic visit. “You are feeling better, I take it?” Noudenet nodded unable to really tear his eyes from the old man’s face and Charibert pinched the end of his ear with his nails quite painfully.  
“Yes quite fine, your Eminence. I am extremely sorry about the destruction I have caused.” He quickly said bowing his head.  
“That’s alright… we will fix it. It is fortunate that you are alive: our wisest and still so young. I have great hopes for you, child. Great hopes.” And with those words the old man turned and went out with Zephirin following like a very grim shadow.  
Noudenet in turn let out a sigh and laid back down. There were so many things in his mind and now this too. Of course he knew this but was he really the wisest? It had taken such a dramatic event to make him realise what or who were really important to him and how badly he had behaved towards them just in order to preserve his own feelings. How selfish he had been. He turned to Charibert who was oddly quiet and simply had resumed his needlework: how beautiful his long fingers looked playing with the needle and thread. Noudenet sighed but he still felt so worn out: worn out physically and emotionally. He would tell everyone tomorrow when he was feeling better, and he would not forget! But now he had to sleep and gather his strength.  
“Ser Charibert… I… think you have beautiful hands…” He said half asleep perhaps not even realising it himself. The former inquisitor raised an eyebrow but then simply smiled and reached to stroke Noudenet’s hair and happily the young mage drifted off into a peaceful sleep.


End file.
